Ok. Let’s Start from the Beginning.

One of my favorite things to do is to check and see what folks are talking about on that Internet thing and one of the people I enjoy reading is the handsome and dapper Martin Beeby who we lovingly refer to as “The Beebs”. He is a developer evangelist for Microsoft and loves HTML5 just like me, but because he is on the other side of the world, he tends to see things before I do (grrr!).

The past few days, it has been interesting that folks have been asking me about how to get up-to-speed on HTML5. Like The Beebs wrote today, I ran into kids this weekend (I was at a way cool gaming hackathon event) and was asked multiple times how to get started with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. What I enjoyed was that they were not ashamed to say they didn’t know something. It is too bad that grown ups feel like they have to know everything.

Now, everyone typically has their stock answer, but I am always intrigued by new ways to learn and have been trying to find good material that actually have some design sensibilities as most of the good stuff looks like it was designed by a monkey with finger paints harkening back to web design circa 1997. But I digress…

As I am always looking for new things to help folks design or build amazingly brutal web apps, I have found a few things I am going to review and start recommending for those new to the web world.

Based on text: A Beginners Guide to HTML and CSS

This website is nicely done with good typography and a clean layout. Even the ampersands are beautiful. Shay Howe does a great job of describing the fundamentals while not doing to typical element by element linear way of teaching, but organizing it in a coherent way.

Based on book: HTML & CSS — design and build websites

Unfortunately, it isn’t hip these days to actually read printed paper. Hipsters will proclaim “I am all digital bro”. Fine. But then I saw HTML & CSS in a beautiful and colorful format and I just had to order it. Mine should arrive tomorrow and promise that at some point I will write a book report about it.

Do kids in school do book reports still? Let me know in the comments. Oops, I digress…

Based on video: Treehouse

Treehouse is a video website that teaches a variety of web design and development subjects and uses a badging system to keep you engaged and motivated. It is a monthly sign-up which gives you access to a wide coverage of topics including the fundamentals.

What Now?

You can consume all of the content there is on the planet about HTML and CSS, but that does not mean that you will become an expert. The number one way to learn is to DO IT! I recommend folks not only find good content like those provided above, but to then take that knowledge and apply it to an app that you would like to build. Also, feel free to create experiments as you may be surprised at what you will learn.

How did you learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS? Let us know below!